The Gamers Arms

Scotchmo, the drunk smelly hobo shotgun wielding thieving widower bastard from Wasteland 2, is here to talk about the new setting in Wasteland 3.

A nasty cold place.

I actually let him die at the very end of Wasteland 2, when you gotta make that choice. Thought it was for the best tbh.

Necro-post!

So, this is getting good-to-great review scores across the board, it looks like, such as:

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/wasteland-3-review/

CDKeys.com is selling pre-orders for a quite-reasonable £29.99 so I've jumped in at that price.

Also, it's out on Friday, so will post up thoughts as and when I have them (fewer and further between the older I get )

It sounds as if it's going to be available on Game Pass from launch as well. However, with RPGs I'll generally replay them multiple times over a number of years, so I'll keep my Steam key pre-order this time, I think.

It’s unfortunately timed in terms of new releases I want to play, as Crusader Kings 3 is out next week and BG3 EA is only weeks away. I do want to play this though, but it’ll likely be November time. Hopefully the worst bugs will be sorted by then!

Yeah, Wasteland 2 was a bit of a mess on release, especially the last chapter of the game. I'm keen to have a new cRPG to get my teeth into though having recently ploughed through both Baldur's Gate games and D:OS2 again to whet the appetite.

As excited as I am for the BG3 early access, given the fact it is EA and stuff is going to be added all the time, I don't mind waiting a bit longer before diving into that one.

Another review here -

I've seen some talk about it being available 5pm on Thursday.

I'm looking forward to playing it, will be getting it via my Game Pass sub.

I really enjoyed Wasteland 2 (I got it after it was heavily patched several months post-release). Will deffo pick this up at some point.

I loved Wasteland 2 (and the original for that matter, waaaaaay back in the mists of time) but never finished it. Have tried to go back but bounced off, think I had forgotten too much story gubbins. Will re-play that at some point, but got CK3 to while away my free time from Tuesday.

As much as I liked Wasteland 2, I found it far too easy to accidentally break or prematurely end quests, or unintentionally side with factions before getting the full picture. There were certainly many branching paths in the quests, it's just that many of them were not clear enough. Chapter 1 wasn't so bad in that regard, but in chapter 2 it almost broke the game for me to the point where I couldn't be bothered to persevere.

The 5pm release time relates to the US which translates to 1am UK time.

Fair do's, I don't think I'll get my code until tomorrow anyway.

Wrathbone wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 27, 2020 2:39 pm

As much as I liked Wasteland 2, I found it far too easy to accidentally break or prematurely end quests, or unintentionally side with factions before getting the full picture. There were certainly many branching paths in the quests, it's just that many of them were not clear enough. Chapter 1 wasn't so bad in that regard, but in chapter 2 it almost broke the game for me to the point where I couldn't be bothered to persevere.

Yeah kinda this. The nuke-worshippers ended up getting wiped out because of a totally random trigger making them hostile to me I recall, and then I went to some cultist enclave kinda place and that went hostile in the blink of an eye. I think it was that particular outcome that made me lose interest, I was making progress but always over a carpet of bodies.

And... finished

It's good fun, and I'm not sure what to say beyond 'if you liked Wasteland 2, you'll like this'.

It's pretty similar really, although it feels more polished and some things have been streamlined. Inventory management is nice and simple, as other than the items you have equipped everything is drawn from a common pool - so you don't have to worry about making sure individual soldiers have enough of the right sort of ammo (obviously you need for it to be in the shared inventory, though), or things like medkits, grenades etc.

People will obviously want to create their own builds, but I would say put a fair bit of thought into the character creation. Upgrade points are not massively plentiful, and while at the end you do feel practically superpowered, you ideally want a team of specialists rather than jacks-of-all-trades, and it could be fairly easy to gimp yourself going down the latter route, especially as there is no way to respec.

By the end you'll likely have earned enough skill points (I finished with lvl26 characters) to max out three skill trees per soldier, so you'll likely look to max out a main weapon skill and two secondary ones - and there are quite a few. I ended up not taking toaster repair, which was almost essential in W2 to get cool gear, or animal whisperer, as I found the animal companions too fragile (it was a sad day when Major Tom, the cowboy-hat wearing cat you get early on stepped on a landmine )

Muddying the waters there slightly are the NPCs you can recruit (max of 2 to go with your 4 rangers), who all arrive with a bunch of skill points already spent, and it's quite common to find a skill tree you were investing in suddenly becoming redundant as your new NPC is already better at it. At least you're able to create a new ranger any time for free (who comes in at your current level), which I ended up doing a couple of times due to the above, although a respec would have been nice.

Oh, and a final note on the loading times, which are abominable and frequent, and in the end I put points into Survival just so I could avoid random encounters on the map, more specifically the loading screens to get in and out of them.

But a good game, recommended.